The Wonderful 101 – details from Kamiya’s PAX Prime 2013 panel

A whole slew of details from Hideki Kamiya’s Wonderful 101 panel at PAX Prime 2013 are now available. You can find a summary of what was shared below.

Main panel

– Kamiya goes over what the game is
– Says: “don’t be worried, it’s a 100% pure action game”
– Unite Morph was inspired by a picture book he saw when he was a kid, “Swimmy”
– Swimmy has lots of little fishies coming together to form a big strong fish
– Nintendo wasn’t too fond of the original all-star idea
– A year later thought about it, liked it too much and went original
– Kamiya’s design philosophy is “Crash and Build”
– This involves making the fun idea right away, break what isn’t until it is fun
– Kamiya can’t make a game “by blueprint” hence lots of crashing and building as it inspires him
– Kamiya next showed concept art for the game
– Originally had a much darker style
– Didn’t like the original prototype character designs at first but eventually settled on iterating the second one, an early Wonder Red
– Heroes that didn’t make it into the final game include Wonder-Giant, one of his personal favorites
– Kamiya created posters during early development to inspire the team working on The Wonderful 101
– Prototype version shown, looks visually rougher but similar in concept
– Portion where characters unite to form a bridge is why the game got shelved
– Nintendo was shown concept art of Peach, Luigi, Yoshi as bridge with Mario walking over them
– Nintendo went “eh, we can’t make that”
– Prototype with original art style had a much heavier inky look
– The Unite Morph was not originally a drawing a mechanic, but triggered by something else
– A conversation system was introduced in the second prototype
– The trigger for Unite Morph was originally based on selecting icons. However selecting icons was not fun and the drawing mechanic replaces it.
– Finished character designs were put on a board shared among the developers to keep track of them
– Kamiya didn’t want a typical protagonist vs. antagonist plot
– Wanted the protagonists to face their own personal problems in the story too
– 13 script revisions
– Seeing how scripts were matched with visuals to block out the story details in The Wonderful 101
– The script helped to determine elements of the game that needed to be created. Also determined the schedule
– Character slides where created containing details about each character for voice acting
– For voices, wasn’t keeping track of popular voice actors in the west but went with submissions sent and decided on what they liked
– The casting matrix was how they kept track of the auditions for voices
– “What makes The Wonderful 101 Platinum?” Kamiya: We view everything as teamwork, everyone has a say.
– Teamwork and open communication are signature elements of Platinum; is the core of their game development process
– They can create something amazing that way, and that’s what they feel happened with The Wonderful 101

Audience questions

– Kamiya first met Miyamoto while he was complaining to Nintendo about releasing Donkey Kong or Mario Bros. on the Virtual Console
– Kamiya asked for ideas for The Wonderful 102 in case they ever get to make it
– Kamiya would love to make Viewtiful Joe 3 and Okami 2 if Capcom gave him permission